he's too young to have this many opinions

How, in the space of only 11 months of being alive in the outside world, can he have developed so many opinions about so many different things?

It used to be that we would hand him a toy and he would play with it, simply because we handed it to him and that's what we expected him to do. Or we would feed him and he would eat. Or we would put him down and he would stay there.

But now he feels the need to express his notions, his beliefs, his judgments and his sentiments about pretty much everything - from the food we try to feed him to the toys and books we offer, lovingly, into his tiny hands.

Last night, we were snuggling on the couch together, just Drew and me, him nestled gently and cozily into the crook of my arm, and we were reading Dr. Seuss. It was a great Dr. Seuss book, full of pictures and hopping and popping and balls and walls and fights and nights. We read about 10 pages of it when Drew snatched the book from my hands, bit off a corner of the page and hurled the book to the floor.

I fetched it and attempted to continue to read it, but he kept slamming it closed on my fingers.

OK, so, we're done with Dr. Seuss, I get it, I get it.

At this point, he was squirming and twisting in my arms while letting out grunts of discontent, so I put him on the floor, which caused him to spin around on his tush, crawl to the couch and pull himself up directly in front of me, at which point he held his arms out and cried.

OK, so, we don't want to be on the floor. I get it.

I picked him up. More contortions and crying.

I make him a bottle. He takes one sip and then pushes it from his mouth onto the floor.

OK, so, we don't want milk. I get it.

I hand him a big red plastic block.

Yep. That was what we wanted. For a while, anyway.

So, the day before that, I was bathing him in the kitchen sink. He was dutifully playing with his bath toys - a rubber duckie, a wooden spoon and a small orange cup. Yes, these things are entertaining to 11 month olds. And, probably, mental patients.

He decided to mix things up a bit by filling the small orange cup with bathwater and dumping it out on the kitchen counter.

"Drew. That's a bath toy. It stays in the bath."

Frown. Glare. Very deliberately, he fills the cup with water again and, while making full eye contact with me, dumps the water out on the counter. And smiles.

"No," I say with my best stern-Mommy frown (which is hard to achieve when you're trying not to snicker), while removing the cup from his hand and putting it back in the sink.

"Guhhrrrrr," he responds smartly, dumping more water on the counter.

So I take away the cup, which daunts him not at all as he proceeds to use the wooden spoon to splash water onto the floor.

OK, so we want water everywhere. I get it!

Guess it's time to make the back-breaking move to the tub.

I can't get angry at him, though. For one, he's really cute when he's being dogmatic. His eyebrows draw down into a V, his lips purse and he gets a little frown-line between his eyes.

For another, I think he's a musical genius.

This morning in the car on the way to work, he shook his rattle in exact time to the Rolling Stones song on the radio.

"If you start me up..." *shakeshakeshake*

"If you start me up I'll never stop..." *shake* *shake* *shake*

"If you start me up..." *shakeshakeshake*

You know how temperamental those artistic types can be.

OK. Now for the weekend plan update:

Saturday we will be expanding our minds and our wallets by attending

after which we will gorge ourselves on ice cream in a bacchanalian celebration of summertime. Drew can't have any. But we'll bring him some Cheerios as a consolation prize.

Upon our return home, I shall amuse myself by nagging Charles repeatedly to mow the lawn. One would think that any redblooded Southern-American male would knock over anyone in his way to get a chance to sit on what is basically a Jeep with blades attached to it and putt around the yard swilling beer. One would think I wouldn't have to nag a man to do such a thing.

Then on Sunday, to atone for our orgiastic revelry of the day before, we shall attend church. After years of godless paganism, we have decided to give organized religion another shot. Having kids suddenly makes you think really long and hard about the kinds of people you're hanging out with and how you don't want your kid to come up to you one day and ask you why he can't run naked around the bonfire under the full moon. (not that we did that...but...never mind. we were drunk and that's all I'm going to say about that...)

After church we most likely will continue our fellowship over hummus and gyros at the Acropolis in Clemson and then we will return home, where I will gaze in dismay at the 12 piles of laundry that need washing and then tell myself I'll do them later and go play The Sims 2 on the computer.